Wheel of Dreams
by Ananke
Summary: Hoshi in the Expanse. Dark fic.


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Disclaimer: Enterprise and all related characters are the property of Paramount Studios. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
Author's Note: The title is a reference to Sarah Brightman's song 'Until the End of Time', which this story was partly inspired by. Don't ask where the other half came from. I like dark fic.   
  
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She isn't entirely sure just when fire became her symbol.  
  
  
  
She has always expected it. Not that she's ever admitted to expecting it, of course. If nothing else Hoshi can keep a secret, wrapped in languages no one else knows and expressions no one else can decipher.   
  
  
  
But she has always known that they call, the kami, the fire spirits of her childhood, and that sooner or later the UT will be as perfect as it ever will be and she'll be just another waxen face on the bridge, needing a little more red and a little more warmth to survive. Maybe not right away…it might well be a phaser threat to the temple, or a badly orchestrated landing, or something as ironic as a transporter glitch that finally drives her over the edge.   
  
  
  
The first couple of years it was the latter two that haunted her, crippled her, but after they had spent a few days in the Expanse, she swiftly placed bets on the first. There were enemies, oh, there were enemies. The official Starfleet ship structure disintegrated within the first year out in the Expanse, she stays in her claustrophobic quarters and mopes in the dim darkness of constant battle alert.   
  
  
  
This day, the one she's once again chosen to be her last day, is no different than any other. No one has missed her for hours, until a Xindi man comes knocking with no weapons and speaking words of peace no one seems to understand anymore. It's only then that the ship's commander wrenches her door open and tells her to give the alien the standard perfunctory warning while he fixes Lieutenant Reed's torpedo cannons. He doesn't seem to notice the loaded pulse pistol on the pillow beside her tear-stained cheek or the note to her parents still visible on her private terminal, any more than his companion notes it. They just stare past her at bulkheads and direct orders to air particles, Commander Tucker and Lieutenant Reed.   
  
  
  
That's how she knows them by then, if she knows them at all, Tucker who burns with hatred sharp as a bow and Reed who has given up to his demons and glows dully with the same vapid streak of doom. Trip and Malcolm are something less than shades, pale kami who hover in corners and over shoulders in her imagination.  
  
  
  
Often, when she dreams, she wears the traditional kimono. White, silk, it drifts and pools far below her ankles and T'Pol is forced to assist her in walking. The Vulcan woman always takes her arm in the duty manner of a Japanese mother and leads her down Enterprise's corridor, to the bridge, where her life mate and her destiny wait. It is always bright and undamaged, the bridge, and Earth hovers in the distance, unscarred and welcoming. But the dreams always end bitterly, even if happily. There are no white kimonos on Enterprise, no white anything. Too much red.  
  
  
  
She asks Phlox for drugs more and more often lately. The dreams of blood and innocents phasered away are horrible, but the idealist union is what proves too much to bear once it fades into a mirage of dimpled babies and a home nestled in the Amazon. It was months back when some kamikaze Xindi carved out Cutler's womb and the fragile life it cradled, and little more than days afterward that their demented Captain ordered every woman on the ship sterilized. He was removed from command forcibly, of course, but not until after Phlox carried the order out, and she isn't fool enough to imagine that he was replaced by anyone better. T'Pol rarely leaves her long burned away candle stubs and Commander Tucker just burns, burns.  
  
  
  
She tries not to think about those days too often, but now seems as good a time as any. The peace seeking Xindi will inevitably be disappointed, it will be the image of Liz's screaming face and hazy babies in the Amazon that sustain her part in his destruction.  
  
  
  
Reluctantly she pulls herself to a sitting position and scrubs the salty trails from her cheeks, locks the pulse pistol on safety and holsters it once more to her side. The knowledge that she could successfully blow her own brains out…it isn't hard; really, she suspects that almost anyone could…no longer provides any sound comfort. But sometimes, these times, when two backs are to her eyes and neither owner believes that she has the balls to act, she does find momentary sustenance in the knowledge that she could at least end their lives, if it ever becomes a necessity.  
  
  
  
She really isn't certain what defines necessity these days, if she has any moral compass left to tell her. The Xindi will die and her skilled hedging will draw out the torture, that's what it is, but despite all they've become, all they've done, she thinks that there must always be another bridge to be burned before killing what remains of Trip and Malcolm becomes necessity.  
  
  
  
The bridge is a burned out husk and no one notices her entrance, except for T'Pol who apparently ran out of worthless meditation for the day. The Vulcan barely lifts her gaze from her command seat, blends almost perfectly into the gray of its dimness. Travis turns briefly from conn to offer a smile, but it doesn't reach his one good eye, and Hoshi within knows that he's as dead as T'Pol to the rest of the cold universe.  
  
  
  
She taps a command into her own console, and a Xindi appears on the main screen. He looks bone weary, and she lowers her tones to a silken and soothing purr, the armor become Ensign Sato gliding on seamlessly. "I'll be meeting you on the surface of that moon over there…"  
  
  
  
There will be wine, blood wine that no Klingon ever drank, and she'll wear the rags that remain from her civilian existence, low cut and bright.  
  
  
  
"Bring your manifest list; we'll look over it together…"  
  
  
  
The sex will come first, it always does for her, and then he'll pull out the manifest and mistakenly shake loose a plethora of family pictures, not so subtlety intended to arouse her sympathies. The pictures are always a mistake, the hazy Amazon children grow horns and throw daggers and the nice Xindi will be dead by the end of the night, his cargo in Enterprise's hold and his blood on her soul.   
  
  
  
Ensign Sato will report her success and only after the scent is off and she's invisible again will Hoshi retreat to her dim quarters and lie with a pulse pistol at her tear-stained cheek and visions of a flowing white kimono, waiting, waiting, for a final bridge to burn…  
  
  
  
FIN 


End file.
